Fallen In
by el-inquisidor
Summary: Vader confronts his dead wife's closest friend, but she has a revelation of her own...


FALLEN IN

"Lord Vader?" Dormé hazarded, as though she knew nothing of the man save his reputation as an Imperial leader. She ignored the sound of his breathing and bowed with all the courtesy of her youth, spent in service to one of Naboo's greatest queens. The queen she'd all but betrayed.

But this was no time for self-loathing. She'd pay her penance to Padmé soon—any minute, perhaps.

Her voice was deep and calm, like the waters of the purest lake. (_Like those of Naboo's Lake Country, where __**she **__used to live_.) "Milord. How may I serve—"

"You can dispense with the pleasantries," the monster boomed. "_**Dormé Tristu**_."

Well. So he remembered her. It was a bitter irony, and it nibbled at her stomach as she tried not to panic.

She thought back to all the lessons in negotiation she'd received in her days working for Senator Amidala. Which, truth be told, probably wasn't the best thing to think about in front of the Sith Lord.

Dormé stepped back to face Lord Vader without craning her neck so much. Lord Vader was tall—as he had always been.

The Sith merely moved forward to close the gap. There were some stormtroopers in the background, but Dormé could see only him.

Darth Vader.

(_Anak_—)

The name left her mind as if stolen from it.

"You have _a guest_," Vader continued, the last word uttered with the rising pitch of anger.

"My uncle?" asked Dormé, letting confusion seep in. "Why do you want him?—He's been visiting me for the past few—" Dormé broke off. "Days," she attempted, but her voice wouldn't cooperate with the directions from her mind. That wasn't good.

("_There's still good in him_.")

"Spare me your lies," Vader hissed. "Where is the _Jedi Knight_?"

Dormé breathed—she could breathe!—and turned to reply.

"I don't know what you mean," she babbled, trying not to think about where Master Fra-Rel could be now. She knew he'd left with a representative from the Underground, but beyond that, she knew nothing. Operatives like her knew nothing but their territories, their small stakes in the Underground. "My uncle never worked for the Jedi…"

"You are of the Rebel Alliance," Vader boomed, and Dormé tried not to think of her lady, or of the Jedi she married, "and are arrested for the crime of fraternization with a Jedi."

Dormé actually laughed at that. "Fraternization"—as if she'd gone and _bedded _one.

"I never fraternized with a Jedi," she said. "And you know this yourself…my lord."

The boldness of her words surprised her—she'd never been so outspoken before, not even in the days of peace, when she was nothing but a meek handmaiden in the service of her—

"_No_," said Vader. "You lie. I know what you thought of my former master."

_My _former master—so he admitted it. He admitted he was the same man as Anakin Skywalker.

She made an admission too. "I admired Master Kenobi," she said. "He was a good man."

There was the sound of glass breaking, as her favorite Alderaanian vase imploded.

Vader almost laughed at that. It sounded like a knife scraping against durasteel. "You were _in love _with him," said Vader. "I know this to be true."

And Dormé _did _laugh then. She found that she no longer had to _channel _her fear—she had none left. She had nothing to lose. She was—

_(The Hero With No Fear.) _

—calm.

And it was Dormé that took the step forward now, though her head barely came up to the flashing controls on his chest.

"I was not in love with Obi-Wan Kenobi," she told Vader, a giggle threatening to overtake her at the thought. "I thought of him as…a cousin, perhaps. And I…"

Dormé looked down and to the side. She felt the brushing of invisible fingers against her throat, but she needed no such incentive. She'd already decided to tell him the truth.

"I did fall in love with a Jedi," she confessed. "But not Master Kenobi."

She found herself leaning forward, as Vader seemed to have taken a step back.

"That was why I left the service of the Senator," she said, carefully avoiding her lady's name. "My feelings were…unseemly…and they would have strained our relationship." She gave a self-deprecating chuckle. "After all, it was _she _who had a relationship with the object of my affection."

A sharp breath, made all the louder by the respirator.

Dormé ended it before she lost the ability to speak:

"Her husband."

There was another shattering sound. Dormé's mirror was gone too—a Nubian antique, twelve regencies old. From the time of Queen Weltheué.

"How _dare _you—" Vader breathed. He looked almost…winded. As shocked as a man covered in armor could look.

"Oh, I dared," Dormé grinned. "He never noticed me—had eyes only for Milady—but I dared nonetheless." She raised a hand, and Vader did not strike it down. It hovered above the creature's armor, and his head tilted the way it used to, the way it had when he was alive.

She'd used to love that befuddled expression of his, the way his jaw clenched and his hair fell onto his face, and his little smile…

She looked into the eye sockets of the mask, and wondered what Vader's face looked like now. He was certainly harder to read than he had been before. Just one of the many differences between Darth Vader and the man she'd fallen in love with.

"I was in love with a Jedi named _Anakin Skywalker_," she said mercilessly, and Vader did not speak. "And…"

And then her last admission—one she'd never made even to herself, but knew to be true now.

She touched the man's armored shoulder then, and she thought she felt it tremble.

"_There's still good in him_," her Queen had said. She was about to find out if Padmé was right.

She smiled at Vader.

"And I love him still."


End file.
